We arrived in Habana, if just barely, on April 6th. Our local friend Jenn, halfway between fairy godmother and witch, had made arrangements for a group tour of one of Cuba’s oldest cities, Trinidad, on the 10th. The intervening three days weren’t nearly enough time to settle into our apartment and learn the ropes, so we left for a road trip without really having seen any of La Habana, and still pretty clueless about how to get things done. Which, of course, turned out to be more complicated than either Oaxaca or Mexico City.

There were six of us total on the road trip: Dorothy and I, Jenn, her local friend Adriano, and two of Jenn’s Canadian friends, Sebastien (Québécois) and Camille (Canadian by address, Brazilian by birth). We met everyone for the first time at a dinner party at Jenn’s the evening after we arrived. With no small trepidation, as we’d committed to spending a lot of time with people we knew either not at all or not much. That was more than a little unusual for us, as we have our own travel rhythm and we’re not keen on the triangulation required to keep a group of people happy. But this adventure is all about finding ways to say Yes, so we said Yes.

We keep mentioning our friend Jenn, but she’s who I just referred to as not knowing well. Which is weird, since we’ve known her for over twenty years. She’s part of our summer camp, Camp Little Big Bash. Every year, somewhere between 80-100 folks find their way to a WPA work camp buried seven miles deep into an old growth redwood forest outside Mendocino in Northern California. Unaccountably, this has been going on for 39 years, and we’ve been going for about 30 of them.

What we don’t tend to do is talk about what we do when we’re not at Bash. It’s not taboo, it’s just not why people are there. First question you get at a party is, “What do you do?” No one asks at Bash, and few volunteer, which is how it’s possible to know someone for twenty years and not really know them at all. Until last year’s Bash, I had no idea Jenn lived part of the year in Cuba. Or that she was a professor. Or that she’d written about Cuba’s COVID response (here and here). Or that she lived in Canada. So for all intents and purposes, we’d signed up for four days in a van and an airbnb with five strangers. What could possibly go wrong?

Bahía de los Cochinos

I know, I buried the lede. And reburied it in Spanish. We snorkeled the Bay of Pigs. How cool is that?

We pulled over at a wide spot called Cueva de las Peces (Cave of the Fish), which featured a cenote (the aforementioned cave), a dive shack, a snack bar, and a couple of tsatske shacks. And a deliriously beautiful panorama of turquoise water stretching to the horizon. If, say, you were planning on invading a country, you couldn’t pick a lovelier spot.

The snorkeling was wonderful. We were able to stay right near shore and swim the clear water amongst the rocks and colorful fish. At one point, we swam right through a school, which parted to let us through but didn’t scatter at our intrusion. We surfaced to see two teenage Russian girls throwing bread into the water. Those fish couldn’t have cared less about us.

Cienfuegos

I don’t know about you, but swimming always makes me hungry. And a nappy kind of warm. So it was good that our next stop was lunch in Cienfuegos, a lovely little Colonial town.

After lunch, we did the weirdest thing: we indulged in some IRL real estate porn. Somehow, Jenn had run across a luxury property for sale in Ceinfuegos, and she arranged an after lunch viewing. It was a ridiculous mansion: four bedrooms, two kitchens, multiple spaces that blended indoors and outdoors, 20 foot ceilings, and an entire extra apartment on the second floor. It had just been renovated and was in spectacular condition. Asking price: $185,000.

There were a few challenges, like foreigners not being able to own property, and having to know a guy who knows a guy for any inevitable repairs. So, not on our actual To-Do list, but another amazing experience hand curated for us by Jenn.

Adelante a Trinidad

We’d been in the van over three hours total to get from La Habana to Bahía de los Cochinos and then to Cienfuegos. It would take another bumpy two hours to get to Trinidad, but we’d be there well before dark.

Unsurprisingly, the countryside on the way was beautiful. It’s like we were on some kind of tropical island or something.

When we finally got to Trinidad and our airbnb, I was a little nervous, as the location seemed potentially iffy. But we were a block from the Centro, and the unit had four private rooms, each with its own bath, and a lovely rooftop terrace for made to order breakfast and evening drinks.

Was everyone happy with the Airbnb I’d found? Yes, everyone was happy. I was just relieved.

Trinidad itself was beautiful, and well worth the bouncy ride, dead crabs, and concussion. It was also colored by how little of Habana we’d seen before we set out. We’d only had two days, so we hadn’t strayed out of our neighborhood, Vedado, and we weren’t truly settled. Where Trinidad was truly lovely, Vedado, which was all we knew of Habana, was decidedly grittier.

I’ll confess that I had an imaginary Cuba living in my head long before before we actually got there. My fantasy Cuba featured stately Colonial streetscapes, little shops with local handicrafts, and Afro-Cuban music pouring out of bars and clubs at night. Turns out I hadn’t imagined Cuba, I had manifested Trinidad. It was everything I thought Cuba should be, and I fell in love.

We immediately started discussing changing our plans and staying in Trinidad for the rest of our time in Cuba. That got rejected pretty quickly over cost (we’d still have to pay for our Habana casa particular) and logistics (The six hour drive was… exciting, and no guarantee gas and driver would be available when we needed to return for our flight back to Mexico). Instead, we committed to figure out where to find in Habana the things we loved about Trinidad. Still, it’s a testament to our strong feelings that we considered it at all.

We don’t often feature pictures of ourselves on the blog, but this is how much we loved Trinidad:

Music was an important part of my desire to visit Cuba, and we weren’t disappointed. We wandered Trinidad’s streets after dark, listening to the music flowing out from the bars and restaurants, until we heard the band playing at El Rintintin.

Heading Home

Trinidad was Monday afternoon through Tuesday, leaving Wednesday morning, but with a few stops on the way. Our first stop was on our way out of Trinidad. We had seen a collection of really wonderful ceramics in town, so we stopped at the studio on our way out of town.

Taller Ceramico Santander

Visiting Che

Jibacoa

Our last stop Wednesday was the strangest of the trip. Adriano, Sebastien, and Camille headed back to Habana, but we and Jenn were dropped off at Memories Jibacoa, an all-inclusive resort a little more than an hour short of Habana. Jenn stayed with a friend in town, so Dorothy and I spent the afternoon and most of the next day pretending we belonged at an upscale resort.

What made it so strange is that, well, that’s kind of not how we roll. Resorts like that are like cruise ships on land. They offer a curated, inauthentic experience, meant to simulate being in a foreign country, but with all of the rough edges sanded off. They’re EPCOT center experiences, not real experiences, so we avoid them.

I’m certain we were the only people there who had stayed anywhere off-resort. Everyone there had flown into Habana, taken a shuttle to Jibacoa, stayed there without ever leaving, and shuttled back to the airport without ever seeing the real Cuba that exists outside the tourist’s Green Zone. We generally find that setup kind of icky.

But as I’ve said, Jenn doesn’t really know us that well, and she said it was a fabulous experience, and it was just for one night, and we need to be able to find our way to Yes instead of No. So… Yes. Of course we stayed there.

And it was perfect. We wouldn’t have done it for more than the one day, but that day was great. We had a king size bed, and air conditioning, and meals with cheese, and a private beach, and an enormous pool, and no children anywhere on the premises. Cuba is hard work, and as fabulous as the whole Trinidad expedition was, it was really nice to spend our last day in pampered luxury. Then it was back to Habana’s mean streets Thursday afternoon.